


safer with the truth than with a lie

by suitablyskippy



Category: Naruto
Genre: Ambient Creepiness, Gen, Pre-Canon, Recruitment, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-25
Updated: 2015-04-25
Packaged: 2018-03-25 18:24:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3820324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suitablyskippy/pseuds/suitablyskippy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Have you heard of the Village Hidden in Sound? I should like you to return there with me; will you come?”</p><p>Karin says nothing for a moment, still eating. Then she takes off her glasses and rubs them in the hem of her shirt, but her shirt is just as filthy with ash and dirt as the lenses, and they get no clearer. “I guess,” she says, at last. She pushes her glasses back on. “Not like I’ve got anywhere else to go.”</p><p>(She's kept herself alive this long already; she'll adapt however she has to, and live through this as well.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	safer with the truth than with a lie

**Author's Note:**

> [There's a flashback in Shippuden 408 where a much younger Karin is being threatened by some unpleasant guys, and Orochimaru shows up to scare them off/loom ominously/spontaneously adopt her; this picks up exactly where that left off, though you definitely don't need to have seen it for this fic to make sense! I'm guessing she's about eleven, at this point -- the anime was a bit vague on dates.]

 

The man has stopped a few safe steps away. Karin looks up at him – up and up and up at him, from where she’s still kneeling in the dirt: at the dark narrow line he cuts against the sky, the blue-black sheen of his kimono. 

“Oh, child...” His voice is nearly a sigh; his eyes are coldly golden, and she forces herself to be still as he studies her. “Oh, _poor_ child... Shall we take our leave of this miserable little town?” 

It doesn’t sound like the kind of suggestion she could decline. She wouldn’t want to decline, anyway: it’s the best offer she’s had in weeks. 

He offers her his hand – pale and long-fingered, nails smoothly manicured – and she takes it, and lets him pull her to her feet; she clambers onto his back when he invites her to; she digs her grip into his shoulders when he straightens. His hair is long and dark and silky and spills across her hands. He seems to have no bodyheat at all. 

The landscape starts to flicker by once he begins to run, moving by in great sudden chunks, faster and faster, until the world is skidding past so quickly that it blurs into a single bright and dizzy smear: of forest and wildlands, scorched earth and incipient motion sickness. His chakra is simmering beneath his skin, so hot and so strong that even through the heavy silk folds of his kimono Karin can feel it: power beyond measure, tingling in her palms. 

 

+++

 

When he begins to slow, it’s in a high place. The terrain is rocky; there are birds wheeling far above in a clear, white sky; there’s a chill in the air that she’s never felt in the humid jungles of Hidden Grass. Courteously, he says, “Would you like something to eat?” 

A little higher up the hillside are the remains of a small courtyard, paved with stone slabs and utterly deserted. Its low walls are tangled over with brambles, and beyond them lies only an arid downward slope, the steep face of a hill that drops away into nothing. On the horizon, a jagged line of mountains are faded nearly blue by distance. She accepts the protein bar he offers, and sits on the edge of a wall to eat it, trying not to watch him back as she feels him watching her. 

“Do you have a name, child?”

She does. She tells him. 

“And I am Lord Orochimaru,” says Lord Orochimaru. She goes still for a moment, and then she resumes eating. “Have you heard of the Village Hidden in Sound? I should like you to return there with me; will you come?” 

Karin says nothing for a moment, still chewing. Then she takes off her glasses and rubs them in the hem of her shirt, but her shirt is just as filthy with ash and dirt as the lenses, and they get no clearer. “I guess,” she says, at last. She pushes her glasses back on. “Not like I’ve got anywhere else to go.” 

“Oh?” His sympathy reaches to his eyes and no further. “I’m sorry to hear it.”

“Yeah,” she says. She’d feel it in his chakra if he meant it, and he doesn’t. “Thanks.”

Orochimaru watches her for another moment, and then he rises to his feet. “I imagine you must be quite exhausted, mustn’t you?” His voice is so smooth it’s frictionless, impossible to hold onto long enough to read. “We shall take our time on the return journey; I have no wish to tire you unduly.”

She’s about to drop the wrapper of the protein bar to the ground, but she hesitates – shoves it into her pocket instead, and stands. There’s no way to tell if he would have minded, but dressed so luxuriously, and having taken her to rest in a place as pristine and as beautiful as this: better not to take the risk. A man who prizes appearance might be a man who despises littering. 

She’s more careful when she climbs onto his back this time, keeping the dirty soles of her sandals away from his silks. Maybe he doesn’t notice, but if he does, then he’ll know she’s made the effort. 

“Are you ready, child?” He pats her ankle, the gap of skin between her sandal and her leggings. 

His touch is so cold she wouldn’t be surprised to learn his heart beat chakra in place of blood. She shifts her weight, or tries to, but the grip he has on her is going nowhere; his hands are linked across the broad sash of his kimono, and he’s stronger than he looks. She knew that already, though – has known it since she first felt the steady pulse of his chakra, beating with the power of muscle, heavy and controlled. 

“If you are,” says Karin, as meekly obliging as she knows how to be. 

 

+++

 

On a dirt road swallowed up on every side by trees, Orochimaru stops, and sets her on the ground. The shade is cool and heavy; what light passes through the leaves is strained to a weak, underwater green, and it hollows out his face with eerie shadow as he peers consideringly down at her. Karin pushes her hands into her pockets and determinedly looks anywhere but at him, and puts up with it. 

Then he moves, very suddenly – stringing together a twist of seals, quick beyond belief, with a building surge of power so immense that the hairs down her neck raise up. A puff of smoke that shimmers very oddly in the shadows: and the man before her is several inches shorter, a good deal broader, square-jawed and as tanned as though he hasn’t worked indoors a day in his life. 

“There’s always such a _fuss_ when I’m recognised,” says Orochimaru, from the mouth of his illusion. His illusion wears a loose brown tunic, belted at the waist; his voice is unchanged. “And the fact of the matter is that I am always, always recognised.” 

His hair is cropped short, and scarlet red; his eyes are as cold as they ever were, but those, too, are scarlet red. There’s no mistaking what he’s going for: in every way he looks like he came from Whirlpool. 

Karin pushes her hands deeper into her pockets, tightens her fists where he can’t see them. “ _I’d_ still recognise you,” she says, unhelpfully. Her voice stays nearly even. If he’s expecting a reaction, he can have that slight waver and nothing else. “Your chakra signal’s not hidden properly. There’s... another signal,” which she realises suddenly, unexpectedly – and says more slowly, as she closes her eyes to concentrate, “there’s a different signal...? But yours is still there. It’s under the genjutsu, you haven’t hidden it properly. I can feel it.”

Orochimaru seems to consider this. Karin doesn’t know what he’s seeing when he looks at her, but his expression takes a turn for something obscurely satisfied. “Is that so?” he says. “Most wouldn’t even notice. Come – we shall find an inn for the night,” and he beckons ahead, and puts his hand at her shoulder to press her onward. 

The cover of the trees breaks open within minutes; the road broadens, hardens into cart tracks, and a little settlement reveals itself inside the woods. His illusion is too thorough. Karin’s thinking it through, quickly, calculating, as she hurries at his side: the illusion is too precise with the details; there’s unfamiliar chakra layered over his own, emitting a signal so strong it could be real – so strong it feels as though it _is_ real. 

The signal feels as though it belongs to someone else. If she didn’t know better, she suspects she’d believe it. Karin’s never heard of a jutsu that could steal a person’s identity so completely, but she’s never felt power like Orochimaru’s, either: and that’s what matters. That’s all that matters. 

 

+++

 

Civilians are milling about in the last of the evening’s sunshine, children playing a noisy, inconvenient game of skittles in the main square. At a table in the corner of a very small restaurant, Orochimaru talks her through the menu, he asks her what she’d like, he assures her that he’ll pay; he’s calm and he’s solicitous, but the presence of his chakra is so huge, so cold, so impossible to put out of her mind, that Karin feels like she’s sitting down to dinner in a blizzard. 

“You are a child of Whirlpool?” As politely as though he’d like to know about the weather. 

“I’m—” _from Grass_ : she nearly snaps it back by reflex, but she hesitates. For the first time in her life, she has the distinct impression this question will be much safer to answer with the truth than with a lie. “My parents were,” she says instead, shortly. “Not me. I never went there.”

“No longer with us, I presume? The tragedy of war,” he says, “the pointless tragedy of war...” His compassion is smooth and cool as something liquid. It washes over her, and once it’s gone it’s like it was never there. “And do you have any other relatives?” 

“No.” It sounds terser than she meant it to. 

“No family?” he presses. “None at all? You’re quite certain of that?”

“That’s what I said, isn’t it?”—it’s out before Karin can stop herself, testy and impatient – and an icy thrill jolts down her spine and instantly she stiffens in her chair, each beat of her heart suddenly deafening. She doesn’t dare move; she hardly dares breathe – but Orochimaru says nothing, and no killing intent spikes through his ice-cloud chakra, and somewhere in the restaurant kitchen a waiter calls out a table number, as though from a hundred miles away – the distant rattle of plates, a distant hiss of steam. 

Karin chances a look up from the table. Orochimaru is pushing the greens on his plate very neatly together; he lifts his chopsticks to his mouth – there’s something wrong with his tongue, she sees in that brief moment, there’s something _very_ wrong – but then he shuts his mouth, and swallows. “A shame,” he says, at last. “Just one of your bloodline will do well enough, but it would have been remarkable to discover more.”

Well enough for what, she doesn’t ask. It doesn’t matter. She doesn’t care. If she did care, it still wouldn’t matter, so there’s no point caring. On the walls of the restaurant are black-and-white photographs – villagers posing before hauls of timber, children climbing on heaped stacks of it, timber-roofed homes in the process of being constructed. If this village is anywhere near the borders of Grass Country, she supposes it’ll be flames before long. At least it’ll burn without much trouble. 

“Their chakra’s gone,” Karin says, after a moment. Her voice sounds brittle, still on edge, but that’s fine. Fear shows respect: she doesn’t try to hide it. “I’d – so I’d know if any of them were left alive. They’re dead.”

Orochimaru considers her, chin in hand, his fingers curled. The posture seems too delicate for the body he wears; the effect is uncanny. “Tell me more about that,” he says, eventually, “tell me more about how that works – your experience of chakra,” and so she does: factual and practical as she works through safer territory, without looking up at him, her voice kept low. 

 

+++

 

At the settlement’s only inn, he takes a separate room for each of them. Relief hits her, though she refuses to let it show, and she follows him up the stairs at the scuffed heel of his illusion’s sandals; she goes into a room when he holds the door for her, and thanks him, and wishes him a good night. 

But he lingers in the doorway, watching her. Karin holds herself still; she lets herself be watched; and at last Orochimaru forms the seal for genjutsu release, and his sheet of dark hair falls back around his shoulders, his face as white and sharp as bone, his kimono shimmering by lamplight. He says, “If you should like to bathe tonight, I shall see to it that a warm towel is available.”

The sick copper taste of panic bursts open in her throat. She tries at once to quash it, furiously, but—

“Oh, child,” he says, with a strange look of curiosity in his cold eyes, “ _child_.” Her blood is loud in her ears, her face is burning hot. “It was a suggestion, not an insinuation – I meant nothing by it. You may rest assured that I am not the kind of man who would prey on little girls.”

After a moment Karin nods, stiffly. It’s been days since she last washed. She’s as dirty as her clothes, her hair wildly tangled and matted with dirt; the smell of smoke still clings to her, the acrid aftermath of wildfire. Orochimaru might not be the kind of man who would prey on little girls, but he’s probably the kind of man who’d look more kindly on a little girl who didn’t stink of the streets – who’d offer more sympathy to a little girl whose hair was soft and clean and tumbling free, bright as it should be – who’d show more favour to a little girl who could accept his kind offer with gratitude, a little girl who could prove she knew her place. Already her panic has turned to stewing anger – she showed him that she’s weak, she showed him _where_ she’s weak: but Karin shoves it down, slams on the lid. Deal with it later. 

“You’re very kind,” she says. The words are dry, and feel wrong in her mouth. She doesn’t want to meet his yellowy eyes. “You’re very kind to me,” she says again, mechanically, “thank you,” and she nudges up her glasses, and looks down at her toes in their sandals until she hears the door of the room close behind him. The taste of panic is still there. She’d rather it were bile: sour and rotten, but at least it wouldn’t be a weakness – not the way that panic is a weakness. 

There’s one towel in the bathroom, when she finally goes to wash. It’s folded on a laundry basket; it’s warm to the touch. She keeps Orochimaru’s chakra at the back of her mind while she showers, but he doesn’t move from his room; and once she’s done she dresses quickly in her dirty clothes, ties her hitai-ate back in place, cleans her glasses thoroughly with the edge of the towel, and returns to the bed he’s paid for. 

 

+++

 

Karin’s already awake when he knocks at her door the next morning – awake, and combing determinedly through her hair with her fingers; she had felt his approach, and before that she had felt a familiar swell of chakra from his room, and she’s expecting what she sees. His hair is scarlet once again, his kimono hidden by the loose brown tunic of his illusion. 

She follows him through the dusty streets, keeping close to his side; she follows him onto the dirt road out of town, where he releases the genjutsu in the leaf-shaded privacy of a forest clearing. A shower of snake scales settles around them, drifting through the spokes of light like glittering motes of dust. She’s been weighing up whether she should ask – but he doesn’t seem inclined to bursts of temper, and Karin suspects that if she speaks shyly enough, averts her gaze enough, then perhaps he won’t mind if she doesn’t mind her own business. 

“Who was that?” she says. 

“Who was who, child?” says Orochimaru, smoothing his hands down the sides of his kimono, adjusting its folds. 

“The man you were.” Perhaps he’ll assume she’s feeling worried for the Whirlpool-nin, instead of what she’s really feeling: which is coldly hungry curiosity, the prickling need to know just what his power can do. “That wasn’t a normal genjutsu,” she says. “There was too much power, I could feel it. There was someone else’s chakra.” Karin tests the question for a moment, then says bluntly: “Did you take it from someone real?”

Orochimaru blinks his long golden eyes, and looks at her more closely than before. “You are quite right,” he says, after a moment. “Yes – you are quite right; I met the man in question long ago, and felt he would suit certain needs of mine. Or rather, certain needs of a jutsu I was developing at the time... Does that interest you?” Something sharpens in his voice. “Do you think you would understand, if I were to explain it to you?”

 _I would try my best_ – or, _it’s not my place to know_ – or, _please don’t trouble yourself for me_... 

She sets her chin. “Yes,” she says, stubbornly. 

Orochimaru studies her a moment longer, and then he lets out a sound that must be laughter – a dry puff of sound, like a rotted husk of what could have been amusement once. “You are very sure of that, child. Well – you must begin with the chakra system. It must be separated, first of all; it must be extracted from your subject, while your subject lives.”

“Because your chakra shuts down when you die,” she interrupts. She feels, with complete certainty, that she’s being tested on something here; she refuses to let herself sound anything but assured. 

“It does,” Orochimaru agrees. “At the very instant of death. Which is why your next act must be to postpone the instant of death, for as long as is medically possible.” His voice has taken on a teacherly note; the way he looks at her is careful, assessing. “In this case, your priority is to preserve your subject’s body. Whatever becomes of their mind in the process is not your concern.”

Her heart is hammering so hard inside her throat she feels as though she could be sick; she can feel the frenetic, adrenalin-fuelled flutter of her own chakra beneath her skin. She doesn’t care. She _won’t_ care. It doesn’t matter, anyway, so long as she’s useful and obedient and at his side; and she folds her arms tighter across her chest, frowning in concentration, and nods impatiently for him to continue. 

 

+++

 

It must be midday that he stops again, to offer her another old, stale protein bar, but the stop lasts only as long as it takes her to finish it: which isn’t very long at all, because his thoughtful, yellowy gaze remains on her for as long she’s eating. The ground is grassy there, oddly soft beneath her sandals. She shoves the protein bar’s wrapper into her pocket and gets to her feet, and before long they’re on their way again, and the meadows whip away into the distance. 

 

+++

 

When Orochimaru next begins to slow, it’s on a hillside terraced with paddy fields. Karin pries her hand from his shoulder to push her glasses firmly into place, and squints around: still and stagnant waters, the crops untended, reeking of over-ripeness in the heat. Farmland like this, she should feel the locals everywhere – the bright signals of ninja or the dulled, untrained sparks of civilians – but there’s nothing. For miles around, the region is deserted. 

He adjusts her seat on his hips, and continues picking a way up through the fields. At the crest of the hill the land drops suddenly away: the broad expanse of a valley opens up before them, terraced on every side with more paddy fields, more untended crops, blankly reflective ribbons of still water winding on into the distance. The sky is so white it’s blinding, mirrored in the water. The greenery everywhere is heavy, lush and overgrown; there’s not a soul to be seen, nor a sound to be heard. 

The ground swallows up her sandals when she jumps down, a splash of mud and lukewarm marsh water and then a wet sucking sound as she shifts, foot to foot, sludge seeping in between her toes. “We have reached the heart of Sound Country,” Orochimaru says. His voice carries in the still air, distantly informative. His hands on her shoulders: Karin lets him turn her to face out across the valley. “Sound Country – which was formerly Rice Country; and I am Kage of this land, and you are within safe borders here.” 

A dragonfly whips across the marsh water, keeping low above its scummy, shimmering surface. His touch has moved against her scalp, but she doesn’t move, she doesn’t flinch. His hands are cold. So is her neck, where he’s parted her hair at the nape to bare it. She keeps herself so still she’s hardly breathing – and then her hitai-ate is loose, untied, and Orochimaru sweeps her hair carefully forward across her shoulder to pull its ribbon free. 

“You’ll have no need of this,” he says, when at last he moves away. He holds it up before her, its ribbon pinched between two fingers, its steel plate swinging; he disappears it inside the drapes of a sleeve. “I’ll see to it that you’re found something a little more appropriate.” He tilts his head very slightly to consider her. Like an afterthought, he says, “You must be able to sense where we’re going by now, mustn’t you?” 

Karin can hear her blood, and not much else: the paddy fields are deserted, the air oppressively still, a lone mosquito’s hum to cut the silence. But she does know – she can feel it, when she closes her eyes and pushes herself to think coolly, coldly: the pulsing energy of unfamiliar chakra, half a hundred signals clustered somewhere deep beneath the ground and crammed in close, packed in against each other, under layer upon layer of concealment jutsu and swarming like an anthill. 

“Yeah,” she says – and stops, and corrects herself. Her voice stays steady. “Yes, my Lord.”

“Good girl,” says Orochimaru. It’s not unkind. His hand is on her again, resting at her shoulder. “Why don’t you lead the way, then? Let me see what you can do for me.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> [It's been a very long time since I've creeped myself out while writing something as much as I did with this fic... Any comments would be appreciated! ♥]


End file.
